


Team's Eating Habits

by wonker8



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Gross things the Avengers ate, Just wanted something kinda silly and fluffy, no one really knows how to cook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonker8/pseuds/wonker8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 times Bruce saw the Avengers trying to eat something inedible. 1 time he finally snapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team's Eating Habits

**Author's Note:**

> I just really wanted something fluffy and silly.

If there was one thing living in the Avenger tower has taught Bruce, it was that you could not trust the Avengers to cook a meal for themselves.

1.  
It began with Tony Stark.

Of course, since it was Tony Stark, Bruce didn’t expect what he saw. The first time they worked together, Tony offered him a bag of blueberries. Surely that meant that Tony fed himself and kept himself fed?

It wasn’t.

When Tony worked in the lab (like actually worked, with wrenches, screwdrivers, and creating), he did not eat small snacks. If he got hungry, he did not spend a small bit of his large fortune to get himself a small snack or so to eat.

No, it was much worse.

Tony Stark chewed on screws, nuts, and bolts. He sucked on his screwdrivers and wrenches. In other words, instead of actually eating food like a normal person, Tony Stark (you know, the genius billionaire who could so easily just buy himself someone to bring him food or build something to make him food) tried to eat the tools that he used to invent things.

The very first time Bruce witnessed this, he cocked his head to the side and said, “What are you…?”

“Hm? This?” the billionaire asked as he pulled the screwdriver out of his mouth. Bruce swore he could see traces of rust on that tool. “It’s to trick my stomach into thinking I have food.”

“Tony, do you… have an eating disorder?”

“What? No! I just don’t have the time to eat!” Tony laughed easily.

Bruce hoped that this meant that this was a onetime thing.

“Granted, I sometimes accidentally swallow few nuts and bolts…”

It wasn’t.

2.  
Of all the Avengers, the last person that Bruce thought wouldn’t be able to feed themselves was Natasha Romanoff. After all, she was crazy good assassin. Surely one of the things that she knew how to do was take care of herself?

He was dead wrong.

Bruce walked into kitchen one day, drawn there by the smell of something positively foul. He found Natasha there, boiling a pot of… something. What he expected to find were vegetable peels and reminiscence of sliced meat. What he didn’t expect were the bottles of vodka and… rat poison…?

“Natasha… Are you making something to kill someone with…?” he asked uncertainly.

She turned to grace him with a raised brow that seemed to ask if Bruce had some sort of a brain damage.

“It’s just… vodka and… rat poison…”

“That’s for flavoring,” Natasha said disinterested. Then she turned back to her boiling pot, not seeming at all to be bothered by the terrible smell the pot was emitting.

“I… er… don’t think that you should be eating that…”

She shot him a glare and that was more than enough to shut him off. Bruce decided that it was in his best interest to leave as quickly as possible.

The next few days, no one saw Natasha. Everyone assumed that she was on a mission, but Bruce had an inkling of a feeling that she might have been suffering terribly from some kind of food poisoning instead. Figuring that she learned her lesson after the mishap, Bruce decided not to approach her about it. She might have, however, gotten some anonymous stomach medicine at her door.

She never quite stopped ‘cooking’ in the kitchen and then vanishing for days afterwards.

3.  
Seeing that even Natasha had a problem keeping herself fed, Bruce gave up all hope for her counterpart. And it turned out that was the right thing to do, because Bruce walked in one day into the living room to see Clint chewing on something.

At first, Bruce hoped against hope that it was actually food that Clint was eating, because surely a master archer would know better than to eat something that wasn’t food, right? Right?

And then he remembered Natasha and threw that thought out the window.

“Clint, what are you eating?” he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone.

“Jerky.”

Bruce mentally sighed in relief, because whew, jerky was actually food and finally someone in the Tower was eating normal food for once! Surely this was a good sign that the Avengers had a chance to be saved! He smiled and went to join Clint on the couch.

“Want one?” Clint asked holding up… black non-wrinkly jerky?

Well, Bruce supposed that the jerky could potentially be overcooked or overspiced or something, causing it to look different from normal jerkies. So he didn’t think too hard on it. “No, I don’t eat meat,” he told Clint instead, who just shrugged as he chewed on the jerky.

It was then that Steve walked by behind them, looking around with a worried expression on his face.

“Is something wrong, Steve?” Bruce asked.

“Well, nothing too bad. It’s just… Have anyone seen my black leather jacket?”

There was a slight pause as Bruce slowly turned to look at Clint, who was looking at Steve with a guarded look. Then Bruce switched his focus to the ‘jerky’ in Clint’s hands and… Yup, that wasn’t jerky. That was leather.

When other leather clothing disappeared around the Tower, Bruce knew exactly who was at fault.

4.  
When Bruce noticed Steve Rogers’s eating habit, he had reeled back in shock and then sputtered. “Steve?!” he exclaimed. “What… are you…?”

The good Captain looked up, the half-bitten beetle in his hand. Chewing with a rather happy smile, he held the bug out to Bruce. “Would you like some? I’m sure I can find more.”

Well, Bruce had seen children in India gather bugs to eat when they couldn’t afford any meal. It was what happened when you didn’t have any money. But to see Steve Rogers, the Captain America, do it…? It was jarring. It was almost laughable, if it weren’t for the fact that Bruce was too busy in shock.

“Steve,” Bruce said. “We all live together in the Avengers Tower. We can cook for ourselves. We can buy food. You don’t need to do this.”

The Captain gave a sheepish smile. “Dr. Erskine said that the serum increased my metabolism. I’m hungry so often, and I didn’t want to bother anyone with it…”

“You aren’t a bother to ask for food, Steve,” the doctor protested. “In fact, you’re more of a bother to be eating bugs by yourself like this!”

“But the only one who knows how to cook is Pepper, and she’s always busy with Stark Industry things,” Steve reminded him. “It’ll be best if we just keep quiet about being hungry, you know?”

Bruce disagreed vehemently. However, Steve did not stop eating bugs. He just got better at disguising it.

5.  
By now, Bruce had lost all hope for his avenging team. They were all hopeless children who could not feed themselves no matter what. He sighed and rubbed his temples, because, by god, what kind of self-respecting adults could not even cook a simple mac and cheese?

Speaking of gods, Bruce remembered quite vividly exactly how he came across Thor’s eating habit. Jane and Darcy were visiting, which meant that Thor hung out with them more so than he hung out with the rest of the Avengers. This was all fine and dandy until the moment Bruce walked into the kitchen to find Thor standing there, a fork in his mouth, carrying a plate.

“Did you just have breakfast?” Bruce asked Thor with a pleasant smile.

“Indeed I did, good doctor,” the Thunderer said proudly.

Surely Jane wouldn’t allow Thor to eat anything stupid that wasn’t digestible, right? Granted, Jane was nowhere to be seen right now and Darcy was happily listening to her iPhone, cut off from anything that was happening in the kitchen. Oh gods, Bruce was going to be shocked at what Thor was eating, wasn’t he? He prepared himself for whatever shock he was going to see.

“Would you like some?” Thor asked as he offered the plate to Bruce.

The plate was filled with a doily and a handkerchief. Bruce raised a brow. “Er… Thor? This is…?”

Thor picked up the handkerchief and placed it in his mouth. He began to chew it enthusiastically, looking much too happy for someone who was eating a piece of cotton. “I saw Friend Archer eating the Man of Iron’s gloves the other day,” he explained. “It appeared to be a good idea and these clothing tastes quite delicious!”

“Thor… No, that’s…” Bruce began, staring at the plate in disbelief. He gave up trying to speak and just rubbed the bridge of his nose. Could this get any worse? Were every single one of the Avengers trying to destroy what little hope Bruce had for them in the areas of food?

Jane walked in at that moment in time, looking around in worry. “Did anyone see my scarf? Darcy knitted that one for me.”

On second thought, Bruce decided that it could get much, much worse.

From then on, Bruce made sure to guard all of his clothing, leather or otherwise, just in case.

+1.  
“You guys want a what?” Bruce asked in disbelief as he stared at the rest of the Avengers with wide eyes and a look that seemed to scream, “Hell no!”

Everyone smiled brightly. “It’s for team bonding!” Steve explained.

“It’ll be fun!” Tony added.

“We shall all share our favorite Midgardian morsel!” Thor said.

“C'mon, picnics are cool!” Clint supplied.

“We’ll all cook our own dish. So it should be interesting,” Natasha mumbled.

Bruce looked at them, each of them individually. Steve ate bugs. Tony chewed on screwdrivers and nuts and sometimes accidentally ate them. Clint liked to eat leather and now even Thor ate clothing, because he thought it was delicious. Natasha liked to cook poison for consumption. And now they all wanted to put their food together for a picnic?

Dear gods, if a supervillain were to find out…

So Bruce did the only thing he could think of. “I get it,” he told them. “I will cook. All of you stay away from anything we’re going to be ingesting!”

“But why? What’s wrong with the food we’re going to make?” Clint asked with innocent eyes.

The doctor glared at every single one of his teammates. “None of you will ever eat anything else. Unless you all want to die.”

Everyone thought he meant that the Hulk would smash them all if they didn’t eat Bruce’s cooking (“Maybe Bruce is sensitive about cooking and gets mad when people don’t eat them?” Tony theorized).

No one realized it was because their choice in food was... less than appetizing.  



End file.
